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Researchers have developed a new test for sickle cell disease that could provide results in just 12 minutes and costs as little as 50 cents. The newly developed test could be used in rural clinics around the globe. 

"The tests we have today work great, they have a very high sensitivity," A.J. Kumar, a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Chemistry and Chemical Biology working in the lab of George Whitesides, the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor, said in the press release. 

"But the equipment needed to run them costs in the tens of thousands of dollars, and they take hours to run. That's not amenable to rural clinics, or even some cities where the medical infrastructure isn't up to the standards we see in the U.S. That's where having a rapid, low-cost test becomes important and this paper shows such a test can potentially work."

In a trial run against more than 50 clinical samples, the new test showed good sensitivity and specificity for the disease.

The newly devised test is deceptively simple and works by connecting two ideas scientists have understood for decades. 

"We wanted to make the test as simple as possible," Kumar explained. "The idea was to make it something you could run from just a finger prick. Because these gradients assemble on their own, that meant we could make them in whatever volume we wanted, even a small capillary tube."

"The best way to state it is in terms of the actual problem," he said. "About 300,000 children are born every year with sickle cell disease, and the vast majority - about 80 to 90 percent - are in either Africa or India, where for the most part, they aren't going to get access to the current screening tests.

"There were studies recently that showed in sub-Saharan Africa, between 50 and 90 percent of the children born with sickle cell disease die before the age of 5," he continued. "Whereas in the U.S. people don't die from this disease as children, they can still live a full life. So my hope is that if this test is effective, it can make some small dent in those numbers."

The test has been described in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.